Lights and Resolutions
by Babypeach16
Summary: Days after saving Bella from Tyler Crowley's car, Edward realizes that he is in love with her, and resolves to return to Denali for her own good. Alice will not let him leave so easily - after all, she has a few secrets up her sleeve...


Lights and Resolutions

After a century of honing my art, I ranked among the world's most proficient liars. It was much to my disappointment, therefore, that no one – no matter how skilled – could deceive Alice.

"I will never _be_ with Bella, Alice," I growled.

"You _will_," she contradicted happily. I might have forgiven her mistake had she not been weakening my resolve with every word. "I _know_ it, Edward." She began to clap her hands, bouncing on the balls of her feet as she always did when excited, a blur to human eyes. "I've _seen_ it – do you want to s – "

"_No_." I pinched the bridge of my nose in frustration. I did not want to see any future that involved Bella and myself. There were only two possibilities, neither of which I could reconcile with my resolve. One: the monster inside of me won, and Alice would see Bella cradled in my arms, paler than she already was, broken, lifeless, my lips tinged with her blood. The other…I assumed that Alice saw the other future, as she was insisting that I abandon my plan to remove myself from Bella's presence forever. The other future – one where Bella and I could impossibly be together, one where she knew what I was and somehow found the strength to love me anyway – scared me only slightly less than the first. With one, Bella ended up dead, but with the other, I did nothing to stop it through my refusal to walk away. If Alice showed me any hope for a happy life with Bella, I could find reasons to break my resolution to leave Forks and any possibility of ending the life of the girl I loved.

I outmaneuvered Alice's attempt to shove the forbidden images into my head. Usually she was the one setting up mental roadblocks, as I unwillingly pillaged her thoughts and memories on a daily basis. Today was a special case. I had little experience in avoiding her premonitions, as I frequently relied upon them, but I had a strategy set in place.

While Alice and the others blocked me by singing songs I loathed in their heads, or resorted to the more intellectual method of literary translation, I saved myself by perusing Emmett's thoughts. My largest brother – physically superior, though emotionally inferior – was currently occupied with hunting Rose down. She was on her way to mutilate his Jeep in retaliation for his refusal to take a forty-first honeymoon. As much as he loved Tahiti, and _Rosalie_ in Tahiti – I shuddered, having been unfortunately blessed with access to all of my family's memories – Emmett found my Bella situation hilarious, and wouldn't miss a chance to see how it turned out for anything less than, well, his Jeep.

_GET BACK HERE, WOMAN!_ He thought frantically. "GET BACK HERE, WOMAN!" he roared. I shook my head. While Emmett's inherent openness was one of his strengths, his tendency to voice his every thought often got him into trouble with Rosalie. Rose didn't respond to threats in a positive manner.

Rosalie was preoccupied with trying to decide the best way to wreck Emmett's Jeep. Images of the unfortunate truck on fire, clawed to pieces with her bare hands, and resting at the base of a cliff after a fall flashed through her mind. She paused for a moment as she shoved the stolen key in the ignition and sped off. _All three_, she decided. Her reflection in the rearview mirror was devious.

"ROSE, NOOOO!" Emmett took off on foot, hoping that he could outstrip her. He didn't have a prayer, and he knew it. _Begging? Crying? Pleading?_ I laughed as I listened to his attempts to find the best way to appeal to her. The truth was, there was no best way to appeal to Rosalie. She would accept no plea or apology if it was not accompanied by groveling, and yet she was disgusted by it.

She pulled ahead by half a mile, and Emmett started to realize that he was facing imminent defeat. "ROSE, I LOVE YOU! YOU'RE ALL THAT MATTERS TO ME!" he screamed. She was a mile away, but she heard, as loudly and clearly as I did.

"Pathetic," she hissed. _Which is the best route to Goat Rocks mountain? That one is faster, but Emmett will think to take that one…_

As they pulled away, their thoughts became more difficult to hold on to. I could hear them easily, but their voices were not enough to drown out others in closer proximity. Alice took advantage.

"Exhibit A," she crowed, slipping a horribly wonderful scene into my brain. It was beautiful.

It was awful. Simply because it was far more than I ever dared to hope. If I could sleep at all, my dreams might have resembled this. I stood with Bella in a clearing, she clearly still human, and me, holding her hand, able to touch her without fear. As I leaned in to kiss her neck, the image dissolved into a fresh one. Alice and Bella embraced, laughing like the closest of friends. Like sisters. My eyes widened as she volleyed a new scene into my mind. I was standing in the backyard under a canopy of flowers, wearing a tuxedo. I was clearly at a wedding, in the position of the groom. Alice flitted up the aisle on Jasper's arm as the maid of honor. I never saw Bella.

"It's bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding," Alice explained. She jumped through the next few images, though to my everlasting shock I caught a glimpse of Isle Esme, presumably the honeymoon to follow the wedding. "I owe my future sister that much privacy. For now," Alice murmured suggestively, as she made the scenes pass in blurs. I had stopped breathing. Privacy. Me and Bella. Married. Honeymoon. Still human. _Jeez, Edward, you don't look too apoplectic, or anything_, Alice thought with deepest amusement.

The next image shocked me out of my conscious coma. Bella, one of us. Bella, one of us, with a daughter.

"_What_?" The word ripped from my lips, unbidden, a rarity of uncontrol.

"I know," Alice was the most subdued she'd been all day, her voice reverent, almost in awe. What she saw was, of course, impossible.

"Impossible," I reminded her.

"Clearly not," was her retort.

I was stunned into actually _sitting_. We never used our couches. Esme would be so proud.

I couldn't marry Bella. I couldn't kiss her, or touch her, or have a child with her. I couldn't do any of those things; things that any girl would want, things that she would someday need. I had nothing to give, and everything to take. That was why it was so wrong of Alice to fill my head with false hopes.

"I am returning to Denali, Alice," I murmured, turning my back on her. It was the right thing to do. I was giving up my chance with Bella because I had no chance with Bella. It was all I wanted and all I could never have. She deserved better than a killer that would ruin her with a touch.

"No!" she cried. "Edward, you can't – you'll kill Esme. I'll miss you. I've missed you too much already, the first time you left. You've already proven that you're strong enough. You won't hurt her."

"I can't take chances."

"Edward, you can't leave. You love her." I became a perfectly immobile statue replica of my former self. Not a hair quivered, not a molecule of air escaped my lips.

"You're wrong," I whispered. It was a lie. An egregious lie. But a necessary one; it made walking away that much easier if I convinced myself that there was nothing tying me here.

"I'm not," she shook her head slowly, stepping toward me like I was a spooked animal. "You know I'm right, Edward. You love her. She has feelings for you, I know she d – "

"Stop." I commanded. She ignored me.

"She does," Alice insisted. "Maybe she even loves you already, I don't know. But I do know that she will. I've seen it. She'll love you enough to choose you, over everything. You can't rob her of that chance for her own life by leaving her. If you love her – which you do – how could you do that to her?" She turned her large, kittenish eyes on me, pleading. Traitor. My heart did not need help breaking my resolve. She had turned me into the bad guy, stealing Bella's future, when all I was doing was giving up my own happiness for _her_, so she _could_ have a future. "Tell me why you love her," she cooed, distracting me from my anger. My shoulders slumped, and I put my head in my hands. Why bother to deny it? It was a reality whether I left or not. It would always be my reality.

I wondered how long she knew. Though she couldn't read my thoughts like I could hers, Alice seemed to know by my face what I was thinking. _I think you made it pretty obvious when you dove in front of Tyler's van for her,_ she thought smugly.

"I wouldn't have been injured. It was hardly selfless," I said harshly.

_You're wrong – you weren't thinking about that. You acted on instinct. If you were still human, you would have done the same._ She seemed confident on this point. _Besides, I knew you would love her far before that. I brought us to Forks for a reason._

"You…what?" I vaguely remembered how Alice had pleaded for a change of scenery a few years before. We had all been happy in Alaska, and I'd wondered if she'd simply grown tired of the Denali clan, despite her fondness for Tanya and her sisters. Emmett and Jasper had thought that the lack of shopping malls in the Alaskan wilderness was making her stir-crazy. Apparently, it seemed, that had not been the case.

_I saw her coming._

"When," I asked, my voice flat.

"About a decade ago, maybe more," she said lightly. "I saw her coming – I saw her as my sister, my _best friend_. You have no idea how long I've waited."

"You certainly kept it well hidden," I commended drily.

"I know." She beamed with pride before looking pointedly back at me. I hadn't answered her question.

"I…love Bella," I lowered my voice, speaking the words gingerly, unfamiliar and potentially volatile should any of my other family members be within hearing distance. I was grateful that Carlisle, Esme, and Jasper had gone hunting for the day. "Because she is everything that I am not. Warm, trusting – innocent – mysterious, surprising…she fascinates me," I finished lamely.

"You are all of those things," she protested. _Well, maybe not warm_, she amended in response to my incredulous expression. It was true that my skin was like ice to any human. Even Bella had surely noticed, shrinking away when my hand had grazed hers in Biology, when my body had brushed against her as I knocked her onto the asphalt of the student parking lot.

"I'm hardly innocent, Alice," I told her. I've killed many…

_You are when it comes to her_, she retorted. I glared.

She snorted after a moment passed in silence, an hour to us. "She _fascinates_ you?"

"It's more than that – when I'm near Bella…I don't feel so alone."

Alice's petite features contorted in sympathy. She left it unmentioned in her thoughts, but I could tell that she had restrained herself from recalling Esme's worry, that there was something missing in my life. Destined to be a lone man, grouped for eternity with three pairs of soul-mates. Alice had mentioned waiting for Bella; I suddenly realized that I had been waiting for her, too.

"You know," she said softly, "the fact that I keep seeing your futures – your future together – despite your resolution to stay away means that you will break it. Some things are bigger than your control, Edward." _Fate_. Her last warning floated about my head as she left me standing alone at the glass wall. "Don't fight it."

I stood motionless, facing the south. In the reflection of the glass, I could see clearly – as though it were a mirror – the headlights of Carlisle's Mercedes, not a mile off, winding its way back through the blizzard that had enveloped Forks in snow. Though I knew Jasper preferred to run in the snow, having lived in the South most of his life, it was necessary for them to take the car as a precaution as they neared town. It wouldn't do if some neighbor happened to peek out their curtains and spy the Cullens running along the snow-buried ground in the middle of the night. Most likely, they would have taken such a strange vision as a delusion, but it was best to remove ourselves entirely from the thoughts and suspicions of others.

I watched the great ball of light draw nearer, closing my eyes slightly so it appeared blurred, indistinct. I had often pictured my life – my existence – this way; a great stretch of dark highway, empty, identical streetlamps passing with every year as I sped toward nothing…

Alice's words affected my memory of the image, replacing the blurred burst of light for the unchanging darkness. Fate. Was I truly meant to be with Bella? I scarcely allowed myself to hope that there might be meaning to this endless road, a light at the end.

I opened my eyes to watch Carlisle's car rushing steadily toward me. I turned away to the east, where the faintest ray of sunlight shot through the clouds. I had been taught – out of necessity for survival – to mistrust sunlight. Yet, it still gave indescribable pleasure whenever I had the opportunity to let its touch grace my skin. Condemned to hide from the light, I both loved and feared it.

The pearly gray of the dawn shattered into myriad colors as the sun rose in triumph through the clouds. I let it fall upon me as I kept still by the window, allowing myself to feel, for once, its warmth.

_Bella_, I thought, and a reckless grin tugged at the corner of my mouth.


End file.
